Earthquakes Coach Frank Yallop stood in the center of the Stanford practice field this week, imploring his troops to take goal-scoring seriously.

“Forwards, if you make a run, do it full speed,” he said of a shooting drill. “Full. Speed.”

After starting with consecutive shutouts, the new team needs a goal. Which leads to starting forwards Kei Kamara and Gavin Glinton. As the Quakes look for their first score tonight against the Western Conference-leading Colorado Rapids, the unproven strikers find themselves increasingly questioned by fans.

The team this week acquired Haitian forward Jean-Philippe Peguero on loan from Danish club Brondby. Peguero, who has scored 20 goals in three MLS seasons, won’t officially join the team for at least a week.

But Yallop hasn’t given up on Kamara and Glinton, who played well last week in a 1-0 defeat to the Chicago Fire. The 5-foot-11 Glinton saw a seemingly sure goal swatted away by Chicago’s Jon Busch. Glinton, Kamara and others created solid chances in a game in which the Quakes took 19 shots.

“I don’t think the ball will stay out of the net much longer,” Glinton promised. “We’re not as bad as people might say.”

Added the 6-3 Kamara: “We want to show that no defense can hold us.”

Hearing their life stories makes it easier to believe them.

Kamara, from Sierra Leone, and Glinton, from the Turks and Caicos Islands, haven’t let much hold them back to reach Major League Soccer.

Kamara, who was picked by the Columbus Crew out of Cal State-Dominguez Hills in 2006, had little to do other than play soccer while growing up during the Sierra Leone civil war.

His parents fled the West African nation soon after the fighting started in 1991. Kamara, 23, said he couldn’t go to school for 10 years because it was too dangerous.

“There were gunshots day in and day out,” he said.

But Kamara found a way to play soccer on the streets of Kenema, his hometown in the southeast, where his brothers owned the city’s team. He survived by staying neutral despite the rebels’ strategy of recruiting child soldiers.

Kamara left for Gambia when he was 14 and came to the United States through a refugee program in 2001. He settled in the Los Angeles suburb of Lawndale with his mother and assimilated into American culture with the help of soccer.

Glinton’s family came to America to escape poverty in the Caribbean. They eventually landed in Brentwood, where Glinton began playing on East Bay youth teams.

A former Livermore High star, Glinton went to Bradley University before the Los Angeles Galaxy selected him in the second round of the 2002 collegiate draft. He played three MLS seasons before retiring because of an ankle injury.

Glinton, 29, first broke his ankle in his rookie season on a questionable tackle by a Colorado Rapids defender. He broke the same ankle the next year while playing in a World Cup qualifying match for Turks and Caicos.

Glinton, the team’s captain, suffered the injury in the first five minutes of the match against Haiti. He declined to come out because of his desire to help the island nation advance.

But the decision to keep playing damaged the ankle. He had to quit, and he returned to Bradley to work as an assistant coach for two years. Slowly, Glinton worked his way back to the MLS. Yallop, then coaching the Galaxy, picked him up in 2006 from the Charleston Battery of the United Soccer League. Glinton scored four goals in 19 games for Los Angeles last season, prompting Yallop to bring the forward to San Jose.

Glinton hasn’t forgotten his long journey back to MLS.

“I had it taken away, so I feel like I’m on borrowed time every day,” he said.

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